Georgiahttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/
Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:05:10 -0500Wed, 28 Jan 2015 13:20:37 -0500The Personhood Movement: Undermining Roe In The Courts: Part 3http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-undermining-roe-courts-part-3
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_images/Supreme_Court_A.jpg?1330022185" />
<p><strong><em>This is the third post in a <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/topics/personhood-series">RWW series </a>on the reemergence of the fetal personhood movement and what it means for the future of abortion rights in the U.S.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-where-it-comes-and-what-it-means-future-choice-part-1">Part 1: The Personhood Movement: Where It Comes From And What It Means For The Future Of Choice</a><br />
<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-internal-battles-go-public-part-2-0">Part 2: The Personhood Movement: Internal Battles Go Public</a><br />
<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-infighting-anti-choice-ranks-part-4">Part 4: The Personhood Movement: Regrouping After Defeat</a></strong></p>
<p>As we have detailed in&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-where-it-comes-and-what-it-means-future-choice-part-1">previous</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-internal-battles-go-public-part-2-0">posts</a> in this series, ever since the anti-choice movement rose to prominence in the wake of <em>Roe v. Wade</em>, it has been divided over how to go about repealing <em>Roe</em> and recriminalizing abortion in the U.S.</p>
<p>Groups like Americans United for Life (AUL) and the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) have achieved great success in pushing states to adopt incremental measures targeting abortion providers in the name of protecting women&rsquo;s health and in advocating for national policies &mdash; such as the 2003 &ldquo;partial-birth&rdquo; abortion ban and the <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/republican-abortion-ban-20-weeks">20-week abortion ban</a> currently being considered by Congress &mdash; that attempt to undermine the legal reasoning in&nbsp;<em>Roe </em>by targeting a small segment of abortion procedures.</p>
<p>But the anti-choice personhood movement believes that the incremental strategy is doing too little to end legal abortion. They believe they have a better plan.</p>
<p>The personhood movement argues that&nbsp;small, incremental legal victories cutting off access to abortion will never achieve the ultimate goal of completely criminalizing the procedure &mdash; in part because those measures fail to make a moral argument on behalf of the humanity of the fertilized egg and fetus.</p>
<p>At the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-where-it-comes-and-what-it-means-future-choice-part-1"> founding convention of the Personhood Alliance </a> late last year, the chief of staff to Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, notorious for his<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/01/roy_moore_re_elected_in_alabama_ten_commandments_supreme_court_chief_justice.html"> legal fight over a Ten Commandment monument&nbsp;</a>he placed in the courthouse rotunda, discussed an alternate legal strategy to end abortion rights. As Nina Martin has <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119766/tom-parker-alabama-judge-dismantling-roe-v-wade">outlined in The New Republic</a>, Moore&rsquo;s prot&eacute;g&eacute; and colleague Justice Tom Parker has been carefully laying out a legal framework to overturn<em> Roe</em>, not by constitutional amendment, but by the legal redefinition of what it means to be a person protected by the law.</p>
<p>Parker, with Moore&rsquo;s backing, has been building a body of jurisprudence that offers a blueprint for a personhood victory in the courts. In doing so, he&rsquo;s drawn the attention and praise of anti-choice activists; Liberty Counsel, a right-wing legal group, has called him a &ldquo;<a href="http://www.lc.org/index.cfm?PID=14102&AlertID=1833">modern-day Wilberforce</a>.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Since efforts to overturn <em>Roe</em> by passing a Human Life Amendment or a legislative alternative <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-internal-battles-go-public-part-2-0">faltered in Congress in the 1970s and 1980s</a>, personhood advocates have focused on the states, passing legislation giving limited rights to fetuses as separate entities from pregnant women. Since 1986, <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/the-personhood-movement-timeline">38 states have passed &ldquo;fetal homicide&rdquo; laws</a> identifying fetuses at some or all stages of development as separate victims of crime and in 2004 Congress passed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/the-personhood-movement-timeline">a similar law covering federal crimes</a>. Similarly, in <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_SADP.pdf">18 states</a> substance abuse during pregnancy is legally considered child abuse. In Alabama last year, Republicans passed a law <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/alabama-abortion-law-attorney-fetus-lawyers"> allowing judges to appoint lawyers for fetuses</a>. As Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues associate at the Guttmacher Institute, put it in an interview, &ldquo;all of that is about trying to build up a legal case that personhood starts at fertilization.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Personhood USA&rsquo;s 2014 attempt to insert personhood language into Colorado law drew on this legal history, specifically <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/03/abortion-ballot-measures-2014-elections">limiting its new definition of personhood</a> to the Colorado criminal code and Colorado Wrongful Death Act. But the proposal was nonetheless widely recognized as an attempt to ban abortion, or at least to set up a legal battle challenging <em>Roe</em>. In fact, Colorado had <a href="http://www.womenarewatching.org/blog/colorado-and-new-face-personhood-amendment-67">already passed laws</a> imposing extra penalties for crimes against pregnant women, the purported purpose of the personhood amendment. &ldquo;They are changing the tone, they are changing the language, they are changing the messaging to try to win,&rdquo; Nash said.</p>
<p>Parker has chronicled laws treating fetuses as full-fledged humans in certain cases to argue that &ldquo;[t]oday, the only major area in which unborn children are denied legal protection is abortion, and that denial is only because of <em>Roe</em>.&rdquo; He has urged the Supreme Court to address the issue at the next chance it gets.</p>
<p>Parker and Moore&rsquo;s strategy relies on what the personhood movement&rsquo;s proponents believe is a loophole in <em>Roe v. Wade </em>that would allow anti-abortion advocates to effectively undo the decision without a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court friendlier to their cause. In <em>Roe</em>, the Justices rejected the idea of fetal personhood. Justice Blackmun wrote in his <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113">majority opinion</a> that &ldquo;no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment,&rdquo; noting, &ldquo;If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses...for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.&rdquo;</p>
<p>A federal bill that currently has <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1091/cosponsors">132 cosponsors in the House</a> and <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/583/text">21 in the Senate</a> takes aim at this supposed loophole in <em>Roe</em>, simply declaring that &ldquo;the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being," which includes &ldquo;each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chief sponsor of the Senate bill, signed a <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rand-paul-fundraises-personhood-group" target="_blank">fundraising email</a> for the pro-personhood National Pro-Life Alliance in November, arguing that his was the strategy that would work:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Supreme Court itself admitted&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;">&mdash;</span>&nbsp;if Congress declares unborn children 'persons' under the law, the constitutional case for abortion-on-demand 'collapses.'</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alabama&rsquo;s Supreme Court is the most prominent court to give a serious hearing to the personhood strategy, long considered by even some in the anti-choice movement to be a crackpot theory and a potential political and legal disaster. As recently as 2009, Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans United for Life, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/228252/blackmun-myth/clarke-d-forsythe?pg=1">wrote in the National Review</a> that the so-called &ldquo;personhood loophole&rdquo; was an &ldquo;urban legend&rdquo; and those pursuing it were &ldquo;heading toward a brick wall.&rdquo; Forsythe argued that in 1992 <em>Casey </em>decision, the Supreme Court had shifted the abortion debate from the personhood of fetuses to the rights of women, and that that was therefore the ground that the anti-choice movement should be playing on. &ldquo;The real challenge for pro-lifers in 2009 is to effectively address the assumption that abortion is good for women,&rdquo; he wrote, presaging <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/12/02/3597770/americans-united-life-abortion/">AUL&rsquo;s revamped woman-focused messaging</a>.</p>
<p>Even more alarming to the personhood strategy&rsquo;s detractors in the anti-choice movement is the possibility that a personhood challenge to <em>Roe </em>could create the opportunity for a Supreme Court ruling that would actually strengthen constitutional protections for abortion rights. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for instance, has <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-wade">said</a> that she believes abortion rights should be secured under the equal protection clause of the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment, making the issue more clearly about the rights of women. In 2010, Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) <a href="http://www.thecatholicthing.org/2010/02/04/the-personhood-movement-right-and-wrong/">wrote</a>, &ldquo;If a personhood amendment comes before this court, a new and terrifying decision may put the pro-life movement back a quarter century or more.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In 2007, as the anti-choice movement&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-internal-battles-go-public-part-2-0"> schism over a ban on so-called &ldquo;partial-birth&rdquo; abortion </a> was gaining national attention, Georgia Right to Life, which was at the the state affiliate of NRLC,&nbsp;<a href="http://archive.lifenews.com/state2175.html">worked with legislators</a> to introduce a <a href="http://www.grtlpac.org/?q=node/93">state constitutional amendment</a> defining a &ldquo;person&rdquo; under state law as &ldquo;including unborn children at every state of their biological development, including fertilization.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Although the Georgia amendment was <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-internal-battles-go-public-part-2-0">based on language</a> originally drafted as a federal constitutional amendment by NRLC, NRLC&rsquo;s chief counsel James Bopp, Jr. tried to shut it down. In a <a href="http://operationrescue.org/pdfs/Bopp%20Memo%20re%20State%20HLA.pdf">lengthy and frank memo</a> to his fellow anti-choice activists, Bopp contended that such an amendment would be immediately struck down in federal courts and, if it made it to the Supreme Court, could give the court&rsquo;s majority the opportunity to rewrite <em>Roe</em> in the way favored by Ginsburg. The state-level personhood strategy, he cautioned, was &ldquo;presently doomed to expansive failure.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Instead, Bopp said, the anti-choice movement should continue its incremental strategy, which was succeeding in curtailing access to abortion while keeping the issue in the public eye. He wrote that the &ldquo;partial-birth&rdquo; abortion law had been a successful example of this strategy because it &ldquo;forced the pro-abortion camp to publicly defend a particularly visible and gruesome practice.&rdquo; Acknowledging that &ldquo;most pro-lifers&rdquo; believe that abortion should only be available to save the life of a pregnant woman, he warned that absolutist, no-exceptions approaches like personhood were both legally unwise and poor public relations:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>By contrast, the pro-life movement must at present avoid fighting on the more difficult terrain of its own position, namely arguing that abortion should not be available in cases of rape, incest, fetal deformity, and harm to the mother. While restricting abortion in these situations is morally defensible, public opinion polls show that popular support for the pro-life side drops off dramatically when these &ldquo;hard&rdquo; cases are the topic. And while most pro-lifers believe that a consistent pro-life position requires permitting abortion in only the rare circumstances where it is necessary to save the life of the mother, some pro-lifers believe that there should not even be an exception to preserve the life of the mother. Other pro-lifers advocate exceptions for rape or incest. This is an important debate to have, and we should be ready to convince the public of the need for few, if any, exceptions to laws prohibiting abortion when such laws can be upheld. However, since that is currently not the case, such a debate is premature and would undermine public support for the pro-life position.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Responding to Bopp&rsquo;s memo, the conservative Thomas More Law Center, which drafted the Georgia amendment, <a href="https://personhoodeducation.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/muiseresponse.pdf">argued</a> that the incremental strategy had taken too long and done too little and that &ldquo;after 34 years of abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, it is time to rethink pro-life strategy.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;[T]he central holding of <em>Roe v. Wade</em> remains the primary obstacle to any meaningful pro-life initiative that seeks to end abortion,&rdquo; wrote Thomas More attorney Robert J. Muise. &ldquo;To remove this obstacle, a case must be presented to the United States Supreme Court that challenges the central premise of <em>Roe</em> &mdash; that the unborn is not a person within the meaning of the law.&rdquo;</p>
<p>If personhood laws were to succeed in the courts, the legal implications would be immense and unpredictable.</p>
<p>The ambiguous wording of personhood measures has led to <a href="https://www.acog.org/About_ACOG/News_Room/News_Releases/2012/Personhood_Measures">concerns</a> that they could be interpreted to outlaw oral contraception, IUDs and in-vitro fertilization. But birth control is not the only issue. As the National Advocates for Pregnant Women&rsquo;s Lynn Paltrow and Fordham sociologist Jeanne Flavin have documented, laws granting legal rights to fetuses outside the context of abortion have led to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/opinion/pregnant-and-no-civil-rights.html">hundreds of cases</a> of pregnant women being arrested or otherwise apprehended after suffering miscarriages or for alleged drug and alcohol use deemed to be harmful to the fetus.</p>
<p>In countries that completely criminalize abortion &mdash; the goal of the &ldquo;pro-life&rdquo; movement in the U.S. &mdash; pregnant woman can find themselves in terrifying situations: recently in El Salvador, a woman was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/19/1358721/-Young-Woman-Serving-30-Years-For-A-Miscarriage-Receives-No-Pardon?detail=email"> after suffering a miscarriage</a>.</p>
<p>As Paltrow <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/personhood-usas-keith-mason-eyes-election-day-2012-65133#sthash.LeTV9vz7.dpuf">told Newsweek in 2012</a>, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no way to give embryos constitutional personhood without subtracting women from the community of constitutional persons.&rdquo;</p>
<p>By redefining what it means to be a person under the law, personhood measures could also have a broad legal impact on issues unrelated to reproductive rights, threatening to upend <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/06/01/136850622/abortion-foes-push-to-redefine-personhood">everything from inheritance law to census results</a>. In 2014, the Colorado Bar Association opposed the state&rsquo;s personhood ballot measure, warning that the vaguely worded measure would have &ldquo;potentially serious, unintended and unknown consequences for Colorado lawyers&hellip;From areas of Family Law to Probate Law to Real Estate Law, as well as the explicit effect on Criminal Law and Wrongful Death statutes, this Amendment could create uncertainty and endless litigation.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Daniel Becker, the former leader of Georgia Right to Life and founder of the Personhood Alliance, also sees the personhood issue as extending beyond abortion rights, but in a different direction. The final chapter of Becker's 2011 manifesto, "Personhood," is written in the form of a science fiction story set in a "post-human future" in which computers have gained consciousness, procreation has been moved to laboratories, and a "specialized sub-class of human-animal hybrids" has been developed to perform menial labor. The anti-abortion rights movement, he argues, will cease to be relevant in coming battles over biotechnology if it remains "at its heart, anti-abortion as opposed to pro-sanctity of human life." He argues that only by embracing full "personhood" rights for zygotes and fetuses will the movement remain viable in the future.</p>
<p>The personhood movement, while it has hope in the legal system, also recognizes that it won&rsquo;t get far without winning hearts and minds. In the final post in this series, we&rsquo;ll look at the movement&rsquo;s efforts to reorganize in the wake of electoral defeats.</p>
Miranda BlueAlabamaAnti-ChoiceAustin RuseC4Clarke ForsytheDaniel BeckerGeorgiaGeorgia Right to LifeJames Bopp National Personhood AllianceNational Pro-Life AllianceNational Right to Life Committee Personhood SeriesRand PaulReproductive HealthRoy Moore Thomas More Law Center Tom ParkerAmericans United for LifeFighting the Right49608Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:05:10 -0500GeorgiaThe Personhood Movement: Where It Comes From And What It Means For The Future Of Choice: Part 1http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-where-it-comes-and-what-it-means-future-choice-part-1
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Paul_Braun_1.jpg?1414688788" />
<p><strong><em>This is the first post in a <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/topics/personhood-series">RWW series</a> on the reemergence of the anti-choice &ldquo;personhood&rdquo; movement and what it means for the future of abortion rights in the U.S.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-internal-battles-go-public-part-2-0">Part 2: The Personhood Movement: Internal Battles Go Public</a><br />
<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-undermining-roe-courts-part-3">Part 3: The Personhood Movement: Undermining Roe In The Courts</a><br />
<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-movement-infighting-anti-choice-ranks-part-4">Part 4: The Personhood Movement: Regrouping After Defeat</a></strong></p>
<p>&ldquo;Welcome to the future of the pro-life movement.&rdquo;</p>
<p>As a few dozen activists walked into a conference hall in an Atlanta suburb in October 2014, they were met with an optimistic greeting from an impromptu welcoming committee.</p>
<p>It was the founding convention of the Personhood Alliance, an association of anti-abortion groups from<a href="http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/5238374947.html"> 15 states </a>who are determined to wrest back an anti-choice movement that they fear has gone dangerously astray.</p>
<p>The members of the Personhood Alliance felt betrayed.</p>
<p>The largest and best-funded groups opposing abortion rights have, over the past several years, achieved astounding success in <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/chipping-away-choice-five-growing-threats-women-s-healthcare-access-and-autonomy">chipping away at women&rsquo;s access to legal abortion</a> in the United States. But these successes, Personhood Alliance&rsquo;s founders maintain, are too small and have come at a grave cost.</p>
<p>In seeking mainstream approval for anti-choice politics, personhood advocates believe, groups like the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and Americans United for Life (AUL) have adopted a secular tone and downplayed their Christian origins. In focusing on drawing attention to issues like late-term abortion, they may have won some support for the cause but have done little to end the procedures they targeted. In seeking incremental successes, personhood advocates argue, the movement has given up on making a moral argument for the humanity of fertilized eggs and fetuses and lost sight of its larger goal of eliminating legal abortion entirely.</p>
<p>But the greatest betrayal in the eyes of these personhood advocates is the willingness of major anti-choice groups to endorse legislation that includes exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. The personhood movement&rsquo;s leaders contend that these political concessions are not only immoral and intellectually inconsistent, but also threaten to undermine the movement&rsquo;s goals in the long term. In fact, the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/spurned-georgia-group-launching-even-more-extreme-rival-national-right-life-committee">Personhood Alliance grew out of a feud</a> between Georgia Right to Life leader Daniel Becker and NRLC centered around a rape exception inserted into a national 20-week abortion ban. Becker and his allies believe that they have a better plan, one that does not require compromise.</p>
<p>Joining the activists at the founding conference was Ben DuPr&eacute;, the chief of staff for Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who, along with his colleague Justice Tom Parker, has <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119766/tom-parker-alabama-judge-dismantling-roe-v-wade">outlined an alternate strategy for eliminating legal protections for abortions in the United States</a>: building a body of laws that define fertilized zygotes and fetuses as citizens with full rights under the law.</p>
<p>On the first night of the Personhood Alliance&rsquo;s founding convention in October, Paul Broun, then a Republican congressman from Georgia, captured the activists&rsquo; anger at the leaders of the anti-choice movement, charging that they had betrayed the movement's core principles to such a degree that it had provoked the wrath of God &mdash; and implied that they were doing so for personal gain.</p>
<p>Broun told the activists of a meeting he had had with two leaders of NRLC when he was running for U.S. Congress in 1996. He told them that were he elected, the first bill he would introduce would be a Sanctity of Human Life Act giving personhood rights to fertilized eggs, because [that&rsquo;s] "how we&rsquo;re going to overturn <em>Roe v. Wade</em> is by giving the right of personhood to that one-celled human being.&rdquo; The NRLC leaders, Broun said, told him they wouldn&rsquo;t support it and he &ldquo;walked away very disillusioned.&rdquo;</p>
<p>When an audience member asked Broun why he thought NRLC and other major anti-choice groups weren&rsquo;t putting their energy behind <a href="http://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1091/text">personhood bills</a>, including one that he helped write, Broun responded that he wasn&rsquo;t &ldquo;making any accusations here,&rdquo; but implied that &ldquo;pro-life&rdquo; leaders have a financial incentive to never achieve their declared goal.</p>
<p>Harkening back to that 1996 meeting, he drew a historical parallel:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They never told me [why they wouldn&rsquo;t back the Sanctity of Human Life Act]. I asked them, and they just said, well, we won&rsquo;t. And I walked away from that meeting in 1996 very, very disappointed, very disillusioned. And shortly after, actually as I was riding away in a taxi cab, it came to mind, back when I was a kid &ndash; looking around the room, I&rsquo;m not sure anybody&rsquo;s old enough to remember polio &ndash; but when I was a kid I had classmates who got polio who were in iron lungs, and I had patients as a doctor, people who when I was in medical school, were people who had polio.</p>
<p>The biggest charity in this country was an organization called March of Dimes. And they were, their executives were, I guess, I&rsquo;m not sure, but they were making lots of money, March of Dimes was probably the biggest charity in the country. And a doctor by the name of Jonas Salk developed a vaccine. And suddenly, March of Dimes went broke.</p>
<p>And I went away from that meeting with National Right to Life and I was wondering, I still wonder, I&rsquo;m not making any accusations here: If we were to stop abortion, what would happen to the jobs of all those people who are getting paid every day to be in the pro-life movement? What would happen? I don&rsquo;t know if that&rsquo;s what it is or not, I&rsquo;m not making any accusations, I&rsquo;m just telling you what my thought was when I left that meeting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He told the Personhood Alliance that every day that legal abortion continues, America risks God&rsquo;s wrath. Discussing his 2013 <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/18/house-passes-20-week-abortion-ban-228-196/">refusal to vote for</a> a 20-week ban to which the House GOP had added a rape exception at the last minute, Broun said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we can save some, let's do it, but let's not make exceptions and that some babies are worth killing and some are not. They're all worth saving.</p>
<p>And then it goes back to 'my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,' as we hear [from] Hosea 4:6, and that's the reason education is so important. Because we've got to educate the grassroots.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>You see, God is a holy, righteous God. He cannot continue to bless America while we&rsquo;re killing over a million babies every single day. Abortion must stop.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Broun's estimate of one million abortions taking place every day is, to say the least, wildly exaggerated.)</p>
<p>Broun argued that groups like the NRLC are selling the movement short by accepting political compromise bills containing rape and incest exceptions and then pressuring anti-choice lawmakers to vote for those bills.</p>
<p>"The reason a lot of pro-life people are willing to compromise is because of that outside pressure," he said. "Whether it's an endorsement from Concerned Women [for America] or the Family Research Council or another group, or it could be an endorsement of the U.S. Chamber [of Commerce] or it could be the endorsement of any group. Politicians, the major principle that they will not budge from is their reelection. So they will do whatever it takes to get the endorsements, the money that they need to raise.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Barry Loudermilk, a former Georgia Republican state senator who had recently been elected to the U.S. House, also spoke to the convention, comparing the fight against abortion rights to the struggle of America&rsquo;s founders, who he said also witnessed &ldquo;a decline in the moral sensitivity of our nation.&rdquo; Loudermilk, who while serving in the state senate&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tony-perkins-embraces-extreme-personhood-movement">introduced</a> a personhood amendment that was <a href="http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/5933716229.html">backed by</a> Georgia Right to Life and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, said, &ldquo;When you look at our movement, we have the exact same things against us that they had against them,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They had the government against them, the laws, the judges. We don&rsquo;t have the people who are totally with us, it&rsquo;s growing. But we have the truth with us. We have Providence with us.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The congressmen echoed a founding tenet of the Personhood Alliance: that in a movement that was increasingly struggling to appear secular, the organization would be unabashedly &ldquo;Christ-centered&rdquo; and &ldquo;biblically informed.&rdquo;</p>
<p>As personhood's proponents like to remind their fellow activists, both sides of the movement share the same goal: to completely criminalize abortion. The question is just how to do it.</p>
<p>The largest and best-funded anti-choice groups, deploying a strategy of chipping away at abortion access in the name of &ldquo;women&rsquo;s health,&rdquo; have pushed state legislatures to pass <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/17/1/gpr170109.html">over 200 new restrictions</a> on abortion rights since 2011, many based on model legislation from AUL and NRLC. This strategy has managed to shut down abortion providers (especially in rural areas), make it harder for low-income women to pay for abortion, and erect unnecessary logistical hurdles for even those women who could access and afford abortion care.</p>
<p>The movement also won a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/us/hobby-lobby-case-supreme-court-contraception.html?_r=0">pivotal court case</a> with the Supreme Court's ruled that private corporations could deny their employees legally mandated health insurance coverage for contraceptives that the corporations&rsquo; owners believe cause abortion. And they did this all while stemming the loss in public opinion that had hindered other &ldquo;culture war&rdquo; issues, in part by lifting up female leaders and <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/12/02/3597770/americans-united-life-abortion/">adopting woman-centered empowerment rhetoric</a>.</p>
<p>But at the same time, another side of the anti-choice movement, those eschewing compromise and incrementalism and pursuing the goal of establishing legal &ldquo;personhood&rdquo; from the moment of conception, have suffered a series of embarrassing electoral blows. In 2014, Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have defined zygotes and fetuses as persons in the state&rsquo;s criminal code. It was the <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/11/abortion-personhood-ballot-initiatives">third time in six years</a> that voters in the state had rejected a &ldquo;personhood&rdquo; measure, although its proponents <a href="http://www.personhoodusa.com/press-release/pro-life-victory-in-colorado-underdog-amendment-67-increases-vote-by-10/">noted that their margin of defeat got smaller each time</a>. Perhaps even more galling for the movement, voters in reliably conservative North Dakota <a href="http://results.sos.nd.gov/resultsSW.aspx?text=BQ&type=SW&map=CTY">rejected</a> an amendment to provide constitutional protections for &ldquo;every being at every stage of development&rdquo; by a whopping 28-point margin. And this all came three years after a personhood initiative was <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/08/mississippi-personhood-amendment_n_1082546.html">soundly defeated</a> in deep-red Mississippi.</p>
<p>These personhood measures, while sharing the same ultimate goal as the incremental strategy, have become widely seen as politically toxic, in large part because they could<a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2014/08/a-fight-over-birth-control-in-colorado/"> threaten access to common forms of birth control</a>. The no-compromise strategy has also become tied to a series of ham-handed comments made by male politicians, most infamously former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, which further hurt the personhood movement, while providing political cover to those pursuing a more incremental approach.</p>
<p>But despite its spectacular losses at the ballot box, personhood movement strategists maintain that not only is their strategy the morally sound and intellectually consistent one &mdash; they believe their strategy is the one that will ultimately swing public opinion and overturn <em>Roe v. Wade</em>.</p>
<p>This series, marking the anniversary of<em> Roe</em>, will explore the recent resurgence of the personhood movement and what it means for the future of abortion rights. Upcoming posts will examine the history of the split in the anti-choice movement and its debates over legal strategy, and the organizations that are currently leading the movement.</p>
Miranda BlueAnti-ChoiceBarry LoudermilkBen DuPreC4Daniel BeckerGeorgiaNational Personhood AllianceNational Right to Life Committee Paul BrounpersonhoodPersonhood SeriesReproductive HealthRoy Moore Tom ParkerAmericans United for LifeFighting the Right49542Wed, 21 Jan 2015 10:45:18 -0500GeorgiaPersonhood Advocates Come Out Against 20-Week Abortion Ban Because It Includes Rape Exceptionhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-advocates-come-out-against-20-week-abortion-ban-because-it-includes-rape-exceptio
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Anti_Choice_Rally.jpg?1396364952" />
<p>Next week&rsquo;s scheduled House vote on a national 20-week abortion ban, to be held on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, is reviving a bitter public debate within the anti-choice movement about whether to support abortion bans that include exceptions for preganancies resulting from rape or incest.</p>
<p>Even as major anti-choice groups&nbsp;<a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/01/12/house-will-vote-on-bill-to-ban-abortions-after-20-weeks-on-roe-v-wade-anniversary/">line</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/01/12/gop-2014-victory-triggers-pro-life-legislation-in-states/">up to</a> <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/01/07/3608821/congress-20-week-abortion/">support</a> the 20-week ban, activists in the &ldquo;personhood&rdquo; camp of the anti-abortion-rights movement are warning that the ban&rsquo;s exceptions sell out the movement&rsquo;s principles.</p>
<p>Back in 2013, when the House Judiciary Committee was debating a 20-week ban<a href="http://www.nrlc.org/communications/releases/2013/release110113"> based on National Right to Life model legislation,</a> Democrats on the committee <a href="http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/franksraperemarkabortion/?dcz=">tried to amend the bill</a> to add rape and incest exceptions, but were rebuffed by the bill&rsquo;s sponsor, Rep. Trent Franks, who declared that &ldquo;the instance of rape resulting in pregnancy is very low.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The Republican-led committee eventually approved the measure without the exceptions, but Franks&rsquo; comment had caused such a political firestorm that the House GOP leadership <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/house-leaders-will-add-rape-exception-to-abortion-bill.html">quietly added the exceptions in</a> at the last minute and handed the public leadership on the bill over to a Republican woman, Rep. Marsha Blackburn.</p>
<p>Most of the major national anti-abortion groups didn&rsquo;t support the added exceptions but backed the ban anyway, and it handily passed the Republican-controlled House. But the addition of the exceptions caused a very public split in the anti-choice movement. Georgia Right to Life, the state affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee, urged its state&rsquo;s representatives in Congress to oppose the bill, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-choice-infighting-disrupts-georgia-colorado-senate-races"> a direct repudiation of the national group&rsquo;s strategy</a>. In return, National Right to Life <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/new-erick-erickson-backed-group-ousts-hardline-anti-choice-org-georgia"> kicked its Georgia affiliate out of the organization</a>&nbsp;and replaced it with a new group called Georgia Life Alliance. Georgia Right to Life continued to exist as an independent group but also&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/spurned-georgia-group-launching-even-more-extreme-rival-national-right-life-committee">started a new national group called the Personhood Alliance </a> to rival National Right to Life and push for no-exceptions abortion bans.</p>
<p>Now that Blackburn has reintroduced the bill with a rape and incest exception included, the Personhood Alliance and Georgia Right to Life are coming out to oppose it. In a<a href="http://personhood.org/index.php/press/press-releases/congress-to-authorize-abortion-in-pro-life-bill"> statement yesterday</a>, the Personhood Alliance&rsquo;s president, Daniel Becker, lambasted Republicans for introducing a &ldquo;message bill&rdquo; with what he believes is the wrong message: "This a message bill. The president has already vowed to veto the bill, so why, in a Republican led House and Senate, send out a message that fails to embrace the essence of the pro-life movement."</p>
<p>Georgia Right to Life <a href="http://christiannewswire.com/news/2783875382.html">sounded the same note,</a> saying that abortion bans should &ldquo;protect all children in the womb who feel pain, not just those conceived by consent&rdquo;:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"Last Fall, voters sent a clear message that they're fed up with political gamesmanship and lack of courage," [GRTL Executive Director Genevieve] Wilson said. "There's absolutely no need to compromise principles on any bill, especially one that President Obama has already said he will veto."</p>
<p>&hellip;</p>
<p>GRTL supported the 2013 version until an exception for rape and incest was added - which H.R.36 also has. We should pass bills that protect all children in the womb who feel pain, not just those conceived by consent.</p>
</blockquote>
Miranda Blueabortion rightsAnti-ChoiceC4Daniel BeckerGeorgiaGeorgia Right to LifeMarsha BlackburnNational Personhood AllianceNational Right to Life Committee Trent Franks Fighting the Right49521Fri, 16 Jan 2015 13:26:26 -0500GeorgiaVideo: The Worst Of The GOP's Anti-Immigrant Rhetorichttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/video-worst-gop-s-anti-immigrant-rhetoric
<p align="center"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org//www.youtube.com/embed/WwBSyQ8o1gY" width="560"></iframe></p>
<p>As President Obama prepares to announce the steps that he will take to provide temporary deportation relief for some undocumented immigrants, it&rsquo;s important to remember why he&rsquo;s taking this step. It&rsquo;s not because Obama and Democrats refuse to work with Republicans to address pressing immigration problems. It&rsquo;s because a small but influential segment of the Republican caucus <em>refuses to do anything</em> to fix the immigration system.</p>
<p>Today, we at People For the American Way joined with American Bridge to <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/press-releases/2014/11/american-bridge-and-people-american-way-release-new-video-gops-offensive-immi">release a video</a> highlighting the kind of rhetoric from congressional Republicans that has sunk any kind of attempt at bipartisan immigration reform.</p>
<p>Some of the examples of anti-immigrant rhetoric from GOP members of Congress&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rerep-stockman-there-are-more-people-coming-across-border-we-sent-invade-france">will be</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/steve-king-threatens-government-shutdown-impeachment-over-immigration-executive-action">familiar</a> to RWW readers. And, sadly, we have <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/topics/immigration-0">plenty more where they came from</a>.</p>
Miranda BlueBarbara ComstockBlake FarentholdC4David PerdueGeorgiaIowaSteve King Steve StockmanTexasVirginia Fighting the Right49082Thu, 20 Nov 2014 16:32:54 -0500GeorgiaHow 2014's Elections Will Influence 2016's Voting Rightshttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/how-2014s-elections-will-influence-2016s-voting-rights
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_images/vote.jpg?1323366905" />
<p>Voters across the country trying to cast votes in Tuesday&rsquo;s elections ran into hurdles erected by Republican legislatures, governors and secretaries of state. Along with <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/problems-reported-polls-vary-state-state">mechanical glitches and human error</a> &mdash; which occurred in states with leaders on both sides of the political spectrum &mdash; voters faced new laws and policies that made it harder to vote.</p>
<p>In Alabama, a last-minute decision by the attorney general <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/lbupdate/3588262/in-last-minute-decision-alabama-says-voters-cant-use-public-housing-id-at-the-polls/"> barred people from using public housing IDs to vote</a>. Voter ID laws in North Carolina and Texas <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-voting-monitors-concerns-20141104-story.html?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fpolitics+%28L.A.+Times+-+Politics%29"> sowed confusion</a>. Georgia <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/222977-voting-problems-cited-in-key-states">lost 40,000 voter registrations, mostly from minorities</a>. In all, the group Election Protection <a href="http://www.866ourvote.org/newsroom/releases/election-day-2014-democracy-should-not-be-this-hard">reported receiving 18,000 calls</a> on Election Day, many of them <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-voting-monitors-concerns-20141104-story.html?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fpolitics+%28L.A.+Times+-+Politics%29"> having to do with voter ID laws</a>. The group <a href="http://www.866ourvote.org/newsroom/releases/election-day-2014-democracy-should-not-be-this-hard">noted</a> that the flurry of calls represented &ldquo;a nearly 40 percent increase from 13,000 calls received in 2010.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In the presidential election year of 2016, it looks unlikely that those problems will subside &mdash; especially if Congress fails to <a href="http://blog.pfaw.org/content/pfaw-and-allies-deliver-half-million-signatures-calling-congress-restore-voting-rights-act"> restore the Voting Rights Act</a>. The two states that had the closest vote tallies in the last presidential election &mdash; Florida and Ohio &mdash; will go into the presidential election year with Republicans controlling the offices of governor and secretary of state and holding majorities in their state legislatures.</p>
<p>In Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who won reelection yesterday, will be able to&nbsp;<a href="http://dos.myflorida.com/about-the-department/about-the-secretary/">appoint a secretary of state</a> and will enjoy the support of a <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article3565954.html">veto-proof Republican majority in the state House.</a></p>
<p>In Ohio, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/voting-future-voting-secretary-state-races-watch"> controversial Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted </a> won reelection on Tuesday, along with Gov. John Kasich. They&rsquo;ll be able to work with a <a href="http://www.sunherald.com/2014/11/04/5893513_ohio-gop-seeks-to-bolster-legislative.html?rh=1\"> strengthened GOP majority in the state legislature</a>.</p>
<p>In North Carolina, where a Republican legislature and governor have&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/how-big-money-bought-north-carolina-extremists">cracked down on voting rights</a>, the GOP <a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/11/04/4294548_nc-general-assembly-democrats.html?rh=1">held onto its majority</a>. Republican secretary of state candidates in the swing states of <a href="http://www.9news.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/04/secretary-of-state-race/18441033/">Colorado</a>, <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/2014/11/05/secretary-state-paul-pate-brad-anderson-jake-porter-election/18520695/">Iowa</a> and <a href="http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/Cegavske-Wins-NV-Secretary-of-State-Race-281583231.html">Nevada</a> also won elections yesterday.</p>
<p>Two influential elections for voting rights also took place in states unlikely to be presidential swing states. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/voting-future-voting-secretary-state-races-watch">national ringleader</a> for advocates of restrictive voting laws, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/voting-future-voting-secretary-state-races-watch">won reelection</a>. In Arizona, which has been working with Kansas to defend their states' respective tough voting requirements, Republican candidate Michele Reagan also <a href="http://ktar.com/22/1780374/Michele-Reagan-wins-Arizonas-race-for-secretary-of-state">won her contest</a>.</p>
<p>One exception to the trend is Pennsylvania, where Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/corbett-pulls-plug-pennsylvania-voter-id"> who backed a harsh voter ID law that has since been struck down in the courts</a>, lost to <a href="http://www.wolfforpa.com/sections/page/fairness-and-equality-for-pennsylvanians">voting rights supporter</a> Tom Wolf. Although Wolf will <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/elections/20141105_GOP_appears_poised_to_defend_Pa__legislative_edge.html"> contend with a Republican majority </a> in the state legislature, he will be able to appoint a secretary of the commonwealth.</p>
Miranda BlueAlabamaArizonaC4ColoradoElection 2014Election 2016FloridaGeorgiaIowaJohn KasichJon HustedKansasKris Kobach Michele ReaganNorth CarolinaOhioPennsylvaniaRick ScottTexasTom CorbettVoting RightsFighting the RightThe Right to Vote48939Thu, 06 Nov 2014 12:02:22 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice: Obama Administration Turning US Into Nazi Germanyhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-obama-administration-turning-us-nazi-germany
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice.jpg?1408378123" />
<p>Yesterday, we posted a clip of a 2011 radio program in which Jody Hice, a Republican favored to win retiring Rep. Paul Broun&rsquo;s U.S. House seat in Georgia, opined that <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-public-schools-reminiscent-nazi-germany"> the U.S. public school system is reminiscent of Nazi Germany</a>.</p>
<p>It turns out that&rsquo;s not the only parallel he sees between America today and Hitler&rsquo;s regime. In <a href="https://archive.org/details/JHS_02_23_2011_We_KittyWerthmannInterview.mp3">another 2011 program</a>, Hice interviewed Kitty Werthmann, the octogenarian president of the South Dakota Eagle Forum who has <a href="http://www.bluestemprairie.com/bluestemprairie/2013/11/hutchinson-woman-conflates-kitty-werthmanns-austrian-hitler-survivor-story-with-holocaust.html"> spent decades </a> warning that the U.S. is becoming like Nazi Germany, a message that coincidentally caught on in conservative circles <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/wacko-vindicated-glenn-beck-just-three-years">about the time that Barack Obama was elected president</a>.</p>
<p>Werthmann, who <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/kitty-werthmann-appear-glenn-beck-week">was a child in Austria</a> when it was annexed by Hitler&rsquo;s Germany, spent the program going through what she saw as the similarities between that regime and America today, which Hice was eager to agree with.</p>
<p>&ldquo;The parallels as you&rsquo;re talking are just incredible with what we are seeing in America,&rdquo; he said, adding that &ldquo;like a politician here in America,&rdquo; Hitler &ldquo;made all these wonderful promises&rdquo; before transforming into the &ldquo;monster you never saw coming.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;And so, you&rsquo;ve got the nationalized education, nationalized banking, nationalized press that you alluded to, the nationalized medical care,&rdquo; Hice said later in the program. &ldquo;It sounds like you were describing America. And the last thing that you mentioned was the gun control. It sounds like you were describing to us tomorrow&rsquo;s newspaper here in America. Every one of these issues we&rsquo;re facing right now.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m so fearful, it&rsquo;s going so fast,&rdquo; Werthmann replied, before warning that <a href="https://beta.cironline.org/reports/whats-the-deal-with-the-czars-in-americas-political-scene/">Obama&rsquo;s appointment of &ldquo;czars&rdquo;</a> signals the end of democracy.</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173533324&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
Miranda BlueC4GeorgiaJody HiceKitty WerthmannFighting the Right48767Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:16:02 -0500GeorgiaGeorgia Congressional Candidate Jody Hice Doesn't Want Us Listening To His Radio Rants Anymorehttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/georgia-congressional-candidate-jody-hice-doesn-t-want-us-listening-his-radio-rants-anymore
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice_A.jpg?1401295237" />
<p>This summer, we spent a couple of scintillating days listening the archives of a radio program hosted by Georgia pastor Jody Hice, who won the Republican primary for an open U.S. House seat and is now the favorite to replace outgoing Rep. Paul Broun.</p>
<p>From Hice, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/7-outrageous-rants-gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-blood-moons-sandy-hook-women-and-judicial-t">we learned</a> that by accepting homosexuality, &ldquo;we are enslaving and entrapping potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals in a lifestyle that frankly they are not,&rdquo; that the Sandy Hook and Aurora gun massacres were the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hice-second-amendment-gives-private-citizens-right-own-cannons-and-bazookas-and-missiles"> result of the separation of church and state</a>, and that we ought to have our &ldquo;antennas up&rdquo; that blood moons coinciding with Jewish holidays could signal &ldquo;world-changing events.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Soon after we and other outlets started posting clips from Hice&rsquo;s radio musings, the archives of his programs were <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/what-happened-gop-house-candidate-jody-hices-archives-insane-radio-rants"> removed from his show&rsquo;s official YouTube page</a>, leaving only a month or so of archived programs for public consumption. But we and others kept listening to Hice&rsquo;s broadcasts as he posted new ones online, reporting on his views that, for instance, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-separation-church-and-state-caused-gang-violence-teen-pregnancy"> church-state separation causes violence and teen pregnancy </a> and that &ldquo;<a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/georgia-republican-state-sponsored-religion-will-end-big-government-tyranny/">government has the responsibility to encourage religious belief.&rdquo; </a></p>
<p>But it seems that Hice doesn&rsquo;t want us listening to his radio show anymore. When we went to his YouTube page this morning to look for a new program, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/WeTalkCulture/videos">all of his archives had disappeared</a> except for some short year-old broadcasts, and a list of recent programs on his website <a href="http://www.wetalkculture.com/dailyRadio.html">now leads to dead YouTube links</a>.</p>
<p>We wonder why he&rsquo;s suddely so shy.</p>
Miranda BlueC4Election 2014GeorgiaJody HiceFighting the Right48759Thu, 23 Oct 2014 10:46:51 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice: Secularism Is Turning Government Into God, Destroying Americahttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-secularism-turning-government-god-destroying-america
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice_A.jpg?1401295237" />
<p>As if we needed more proof that Rep. Paul Broun&rsquo;s likely GOP replacement in the House, Georgia pastor and activist Jody Hice, will be <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/7-outrageous-rants-gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-blood-moons-sandy-hook-women-and-judicial-t"> just as enthusiastic a Christian-nation advocate </a> as his predecessor, we stumbled across this clip from a <a href="https://archive.org/details/JHS_03_29_2011_Tu_SenatorSaysProLifersDontDeserveFreedom_SecularismNotNeutral.mp">2011 broadcast</a> of Hice&rsquo;s radio show in which he laments that the separation of church and state is turning government into God and thereby destroying America:</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173344182&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>&ldquo;The more we remove God individually from our lives or culturally, the more secular we will become, which means that in place of God we&rsquo;re going to set ourselves up or we will set up the state, the government, to fulfill the role of God,&rdquo; Hice opined.</p>
<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the only option is that&rsquo;s what happens, and that precisely is why secularism is not, cannot, be neutral,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Secularism, the belief system in itself, by doing away with God in turn sets itself up as God, either as an individual or as a government. That&rsquo;s where we&rsquo;re moving. And we are experiencing what we are experiencing in this country simply because of our continual drifting away from our Judeo-Christian principles, drifting away from our awareness and understanding and belief in God for so long that now we are reaping the consequences.&rdquo;</p>
Miranda BlueC4Election 2014GeorgiaJody HiceSeparation of Church and StateFighting the RightReligious Liberty48744Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:50:44 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice: Public Schools Reminiscent Of Nazi Germanyhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-public-schools-reminiscent-nazi-germany
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice.jpg?1408378123" />
<p>Jody Hice, the GOP nominee for an open House seat in Georgia, said on his radio program in 2011 that &ldquo;totalitarian&rdquo; liberals have turned public schools into &ldquo;camps for indoctrination,&rdquo; a strategy he likened to Nazi Germany.</p>
<p>Hice launched into <a href="https://archive.org/details/PublicSchoolsIndoctrinationCamp">his commentary</a> by citing a <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2011/03/271521/">similar argument made by Chuck Norris in WorldNetDaily</a> before adding his own spin to the issue.</p>
<p>Hice seems to imply that the very existence of public schools is a Nazi-like scheme, but that liberals in particular are trying to maintain their &ldquo;clutch&rdquo; on public schools in order to control &ldquo;the minds of children&rdquo; and raise money from teachers&rsquo; unions:</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173325846&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Obviously, if we have government &mdash; which is what the public school is &mdash; if we have government indoctrinating what students are learning, then we have a problem. This took place in Germany, friends. I&rsquo;m not trying to say we are necessarily headed in that direction, but it is undeniable that one of the first things Hitler did was to grab, so to speak, the minds of the youth. And once he was able to instill in those young minds his own ideals and his own philosophy and that of the Nazi Party, then the rest of it was pretty much a piece of cake. It was a cakewalk to go through once you had the minds of the schoolchildren at every age level.</p>
<p>It is likewise just as dangerous what we are witnessing today. And it&rsquo;s obvious that the liberals in this country are going to be fighting tooth and nail to protect the public school system from getting out from underneath their total, absolute, totalitarian control. If it gets out of their control, they not only lose the minds of the children in this country, but they also lose enormous financial resources, as the teachers&rsquo; unions are the number one biggest supporter politically to liberal ideology. So there&rsquo;s a lot at stake for the liberals to continue their clutch on the public school system.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Later in the program, Hice elaborated on his concerns, citing a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Freefall-American-University-Corrupting-Generation/dp/1595555544">book</a> lamenting &ldquo;political correctness" on college campuses to warn that public schools are training students to &ldquo;disdain America&rdquo; and to defend homosexuality and &ldquo;the green agendas.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;What happens when our schools become just nothing other than liberal &ndash; or, soften it up a little, progressive &ndash; camps for indoctrination, which in essence is what they have become?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
<p>He warned that schools are engaging in &ldquo;the intentional training of students to dislike, to actually disdain America&rdquo; and &ldquo;encouraging students to freely experiment with all forms of sexuality, forcefully defend issues like abortion and homosexuality and also just encouraging students to become cultural advocates for political correctness, and there&rsquo;s no tolerance for political incorrectness.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s the push for relativism, for globalization, for environmental agendas, the green agendas and tolerance for everybody,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;All of this stuff is now being pushed upon children in the public school system.&rdquo;</p>
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Miranda BlueAnti-GayC4Election 2014EnvironmentEquality For AllGeorgiaJody HicePublic EducationFighting the Right48737Wed, 22 Oct 2014 09:43:09 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice: Houston Subpoena Flap Is The Anti-Gay Alamohttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-houston-subpoena-flap-anti-gay-alamo
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice.jpg?1408378123" />
<p>Georgia Republican congressional candidate Jody Hice <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZXlIQt2Aro&list=UUsWWUGMP25M9NZns89WSVtQ">devoted his most recent radio commentary </a>to <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-houston-case-worst-history-mayors-lesbian-predilections-blame"> the controversy over subpoena&rsquo;s served to a number of Houston pastors </a> as part of litigation over the city&rsquo;s recently enacted nondiscrimination ordinance.</p>
<p>Although city officials have been backing away from the subpoenas, attributing them to overly zealous pro-bono lawyers, the Religious Right has<a href="http://religiondispatches.org/houstons-pastor-subpoenas-a-meme-made-for-fox-news/"> turned the incident into a cause celebre</a>, and Hice is on board, declaring on his radio program that the Houston incident is &ldquo;the new Alamo&rdquo; for anti-gay activists.</p>
<p>&ldquo;This is the battleground now over traditional family,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And what is going to occur over this development is that we are either going to see this in Houston, Texas, be the beginning of the end of the LGBT assault, if you will, on freedom to practice religion and of traditional family values being rightfully defended, or this is going to be a huge step toward the ultimate collapse of religious liberty in America.&rdquo;</p>
<p>He warned listeners that if they don&rsquo;t get involved in Houston, &ldquo;one day the government is going to be knocking on the door of your pastor.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;This is the first attempt in this country where we have a widespread attack on pastors in an entire region. And if it is not stopped here, we are in for a serious problem regarding the attacks of religious liberty in this country,&rdquo; he said.</p>
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<p>Earlier in the program, Hice alleged that the subpoenas &mdash; which were related to a lawsuit over the validity of petition signatures &mdash; were in fact part of a scheme by Houston&rsquo;s openly lesbian mayor to find sermons that she &ldquo;might deem to be offensive or whatever&rdquo; and bring charges against pastors for preaching from the Bible.</p>
<p>&ldquo;They may be actually trying to bring legal charges against these pastors for sharing with their congregants scriptural passages,&rdquo; he guessed.</p>
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Miranda BlueC4Election 2014Equality For AllGeorgiaJody HiceTexasFighting the RightReligious Liberty48680Thu, 16 Oct 2014 13:37:42 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice: 'Who Could Possibly Be Offended' By School-Sponsored Prayer?http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-who-could-possibly-be-offended-school-sponsored-prayer
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice_A.jpg?1401295237" />
<p>On his<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbKBwjRvh4s"> radio show</a> earlier this week, Georgia Republican congressional candidate Jody Hice discussed the Tennessee cheerleading team that, in an effort to avoid legal action, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0920/Tennesee-cheerleaders-cleverly-defy-school-prayer-ban.-Or-did-they"> replaced its traditional reading of a prayer over a loudspeaker with a moment of silence for individual prayer before games</a>.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We have a majority of people who want to have a prayer before a ballgame and yet we are rapidly becoming a society where the minority rule,&rdquo; Hice lamented, adding, &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re in the majority in a situation like this, the minority rules. I don&rsquo;t believe that is the intent of our Constitution.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Who could possibly be offended&rdquo; by a school-sponsored sectarian prayer, Hice asked, recalling that in his school athletic years a prayer was read before every game and &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t recall anyone on either side of our competition every being taken off in an ambulance to the hospital.&rdquo;</p>
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Miranda BlueC4Election 2014GeorgiaJody HiceSeparation of Church and StateFighting the RightReligious Liberty48554Fri, 03 Oct 2014 14:39:31 -0500GeorgiaGOP Congressional Candidate Refuses To Debate At 'Suspect Venue' Of Islamic Community Centerhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gop-congressional-candidate-refuses-debate-suspect-venue-islamic-community-center
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_images/3D_elephant_A.jpg?1330022095" />
<p><em>Corrected</em></p>
<p>Jim Galloway at the Atlanta Journal Constitution offers a <a href="http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/10/01/the-islamic-sponsorship-of-a-georgia-congressional-debate/">roundup of the drama</a> surrounding a congressional debate this week between Democratic Rep. John Barrow of Georgia and his Republican challenger Rick Allen, which included a last-minute venue change because Allen refused to debate at the &ldquo;suspect venue&rdquo; of an Augusta-area Islamic community center.</p>
<p>The debate, sponsored by the Islamic Society of Augusta <a href="http://newstimes.augusta.com/opinion/2014-09-28/we-all-deserve-better-than-this">in conjunction with a local newspaper</a>, was scheduled to take place in the 800-seat community center, until Allen&rsquo;s campaign refused to go there, calling it a &ldquo;<a href="http://newstimes.augusta.com/opinion/2014-09-28/we-all-deserve-better-than-this">suspect venue</a>&rdquo; and attacking Barrow for &ldquo;standing shoulder to shoulder&rdquo; with a &ldquo;Muslim cleric&rdquo; (the man organizing the event was actually a doctor).</p>
<p>So, Galloway explains, the debate was moved to a smaller location (to the <a href="http://newstimes.augusta.com/nat/2014-10-01/12th-congressional-district-candidates-john-barrow-rick-allen-debate-issues-in-evans"> annoyance of some would-be attendees </a> who were turned away), but the drama didn&rsquo;t end there, as the chair of the Columbia County GOP &ldquo;made every attempt to avoid&rdquo; the 73-year-old Egyptian-American doctor who had arranged the debate and refused to shake his hand. This, Galeas later explained, was not because of the doctor&rsquo;s religion but because he specializes in high-risk pregnancies, which can sometimes end in abortion.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The players were U.S. Rep. John Barrow, the Augusta Democrat, and Republican challenger Rick Allen, a local businessman. The only thing that separated the two candidates was air, a few issues, and a stenciled, paper sign denoting the sponsor of the event: The Islamic Society of Augusta.</p>
<p>&hellip;</p>
<p>&hellip;But the venue was changed from the 800-seat Islamic Community Center to a much smaller government venue.</p>
<p>One of the two parties involved was uncomfortable in such a place of worship, Augusta Chronicle president Dana Atkins explained to local talk radio host Austin Rhodes of WGAC (580AM). &ldquo;It was the Rick Allen campaign headquarters,&rdquo; Atkins said, when pressed.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Barrow&rsquo;s obviously close association with the head of the Islamic Center is his affair, but it does make this a suspect venue for us,&rdquo; is the line that stood out in an Allen campaign press release.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the debate limped forward. Then came Saturday afternoon, and &mdash; just as the crowd began gathering &mdash; the Hand Shake Incident.</p>
<p>The event organizer was 73-year-old Dr. [Hossam] Fadel, an Egyptian-American and now-retired physician recruited to Augusta in 1975 by the Medical College of Georgia. Also in the room was Dewey Galeas, chairman of the Columbia County GOP.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I made every attempt to avoid the man. I walked by (Fadel), acknowledged him, thanked him for his hospitality, and then I walked on,&rdquo; Galeas later said.</p>
<p>Fadel pursued and offered Galeas his hand. The county GOP chairman refused. Galeas said it wasn&rsquo;t Fadel&rsquo;s Muslim religion that motivated the slight, but his own &ldquo;deep religious conviction over abortion.&rdquo;</p>
<p>To explain: Fadel was brought to Augusta to establish a new specialty at the medical school called maternal fetal medicine. It concerns the management of high-risk pregnancies, which do not always end well.</p>
<p>Fadel declined to speak of the incident, except to say that Galeas later emailed him an apology, which he has accepted.</p>
<p>&hellip;.</p>
<p>But it was the final question that was the likely focus of the crowd: How will you help other members of Congress understand that not all Muslims are terrorists?</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think I do it by example, by treating every law-abiding citizen alike. That&rsquo;s what the Framers intended. That&rsquo;s what we should do,&rdquo; Barrow said, reminding the audience that it wasn&rsquo;t his idea to move the debate.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think that John Barrow should be asked the question, &lsquo;Why he insisted that the debate be in the Islamic Center?&rsquo;&rdquo; Allen replied. &ldquo;The idea behind this is, we want to make everybody feel welcome at every facility, okay?&rdquo;</p>
<p>As for the tension between Muslims and their fellow Americans, Allen had this recommendation: &ldquo;What I want, from everyone who is a citizen in this country, is to speak out &ndash; and to speak out heartily &ndash; against [ISIS]. That&rsquo;s what I want to see from every religion. We must stop this radicalism,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p>The Islamic Society of Augusta has, in fact, already done so.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Correction:</em> This post originally misstated the politician who reportedly refused to shake the event organizer's hand. It was Columbia County GOP chairmain Dewey Galeas, not Rick Allen.</p>
Miranda BlueAnti-MuslimC4GeorgiaRick AllenFighting the RightReligious Liberty48538Thu, 02 Oct 2014 13:55:42 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice: 'Hypocritical' Obama 'Attacking Us Here In America While Trying To Defend Others Around The World'http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-hypocritical-obama-attacking-us-here-america-while-trying-defend-others-around-wor
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice.jpg?1408378123" />
<p>GOP congressional candidate Jody Hice of Georgia <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxB0IsfKPfU&list=TLSmcptkCCNEI8oQ3K1ciqFlhYC1gPgRL4">took to his radio program</a> this week to attack President Obama for &ldquo;giving the appearance of a willingness to defend religious liberties&rdquo; in the Middle East merely for &ldquo;political advantage,&rdquo; while &ldquo;fighting against religious freedom here&rdquo; through the HHS contraception coverage mandate.<br />
<br />
&ldquo;Our same administration is attacking us here in America while trying to defend others around the world,&rdquo; Hice lamented.</p>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>
Miranda BlueC4Election 2014GeorgiaJody HiceFighting the RightReligious Liberty48518Wed, 01 Oct 2014 10:23:29 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice: Separation Of Church And State Caused Gang Violence, Teen Pregnancyhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-separation-church-and-state-caused-gang-violence-teen-pregnancy
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice_A.jpg?1401295237" />
<p>On his radio program yesterday, Georgia GOP U.S. House nominee Jody Hice blamed court decisions barring school-sponsored prayer and the display of religious texts in public buildings for a &ldquo;downward slide&rdquo; in America, including low test scores, gang violence, drugs, teenage pregnancy and &ldquo;promiscuity.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;[A]s we have removed prayer and Bible and our Christian heritage from our public school, what has been the counter consequence?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Has behavior increased or decreased? Has education gotten better or worse? Have our overall citizenship, our citizenry, have we become a better place to live or a worse place to live? Is there more drugs or less? More gang violence or less? More teenage pregnancy or less? More promiscuity or less?&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Folks, across the board we have suffered,&rdquo; he concluded.</p>
<p>In fact, teen pregnancy rates have been <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsteenpregnancy/">falling steadily</a> over the past two decades as has the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/yrbs/pdf/us_sexual_trend_yrbs.pdf">rate of sexual activity</a> among teens, and in 2011&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html">violent crime in the U.S. fell to the lowest rate in 40 years</a>, a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/upshot/perceptions-havent-caught-up-to-decline-in-crime.html?abt=0002&abg=1">trend that has persisted</a>. But somehow we don&rsquo;t think Hice meant to credit the separation of church and state for these positive trends.</p>
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<blockquote>
<p>So we had in 1952 a clear understanding of the role of religion in our public life, even in our schools. Then shortly thereafter we had the beginning of a reinterpretation of the First Amendment, a reinterpretation of separation of church and state as it applies to the public school system.</p>
<p>And wow, have we been on a downward slide ever since. Removing prayer, then removing the Bible, then removing religious documents such as the Ten Commandments, which of course has led to the removal of other symbols and so forth, and then removal of benedictions and invocations at any kind of school event or activity.</p>
<p>And I just want to ask you, what kind of behavior, as we have removed prayer and Bible and our Christian heritage from our public school, what has been the counter consequence? Has behavior increased or decreased? Has education gotten better or worse? Have our overall citizenship, our citizenry, have we become a better place to live or a worse place to live? Is there more drugs or less? More gang violence or less? More teenage pregnancy or less? More promiscuity or less? What has happened in our society as we have removed our religious heritage from being taught, from even being allowed in our public schools?</p>
<p>Folks, across the board we have suffered. Education scores have gone down, violence and crime has gone up and we are witnessing more and more of the consequence of those decisions.</p>
</blockquote>
Miranda BlueC4Election 2014GeorgiaJody HiceSeparation of Church and StateFighting the RightReligious Liberty48364Thu, 18 Sep 2014 13:18:59 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice, GOP House Candidate, Claims Gay People Have 'No Rights That Are Missing'http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-gop-house-candidate-claims-gay-people-have-no-rights-are-missing
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice.jpg?1408378123" />
<p>Georgia pastor and activist Jody Hice, who is now the GOP nominee to fill Rep. Paul Broun&rsquo;s U.S. House seat, explained on an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD2qB1JWYkY&list=TLT2PK1ZcnJuHmP_J8UlEN21Gai1LFHRXe" target="_blank"> episode of his radio program posted today </a> that LGBT people aren&rsquo;t asking for equal rights because &ldquo;gay people have the same rights as everybody else.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s just suppose a gay person comes up to you and says something like, &lsquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I have the same rights as everybody else? Why can I not marry the person I love?&rsquo;&rdquo; Hice said.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Well what rights are we talking about?&rdquo; he asked, before implying that gay people can simply marry someone of the opposite sex: &ldquo;Gay people have the same rights as everybody else. There are no rights that are missing. They have the same rights as anyone. We are Americans and we all have the same rights.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;People have been loving one another as companions and so forth for a long, long time and they have been giving care to one another for a long, long time without calling every instance of love and mutual care, without calling that marriage. But now all of a sudden we have the demand to fundamentally redefine the world marriage,&rdquo; he continued.</p>
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<p>Later in the program he likened same-sex marriage bans to prohibitions against bigamy and incest, saying that when it comes to marriage, &ldquo;homosexuals, gay people, have exactly the same right as heterosexuals have.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Homosexuals have the right to be married but what they are demanding, in reality, is that marriage be redefined to suit them,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We already have marriage laws that prevent people from marrying the person they love,&rdquo; he said, citing people who want to marry their siblings.</p>
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Miranda BlueAnti-GayC4Equality For AllGeorgiaJody HiceMarriage EqualityMarriage Equality48327Tue, 16 Sep 2014 10:36:46 -0500GeorgiaInfighting Among Anti-Choice Groups Intensifies With Personhood Trademark Feudhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/infighting-among-anti-choice-groups-intensifies-personhood-trademark-feud
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Anti_Choice_Rally.jpg?1396364952" />
<p>The effort of hardline &ldquo;personhood&rdquo; groups to break free of an anti-choice movement they see as too compromising is hitting a roadblock as the two major groups advocating fetal personhood are <a href="http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/09/04/living-in-spin-city-the-rapid-aftermath-of-a-judges-denunciation-and-20k-in-fines/"> now feuding with each other </a> .</p>
<p>The conservative website Z Politics <a href="http://zpolitics.com/personhood-usa-breaks-ties-with-dan-becker/">printed an email this week</a> from Personhood USA, the group that brought radical &ldquo;personhood&rdquo; initiatives to states like <a href="http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/07/23/colorado-activists-rally-personhood-usa-backed-ballot-measure/">Colorado</a> and <a href="http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/03/05/mississippi-personhood-theyre-baaaacccckkkk/">Mississippi</a>, announcing that it has cut ties with a new group, the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/spurned-georgia-group-launching-even-more-extreme-rival-national-right-life-committee"> National Personhood Alliance </a> (NPA), which was founded this year by the disgruntled former Georgia chapter of the National Right to Life Committee. NPA hoped to bring together activists who believe that the strategy of groups such as NRLC to <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/chipping-away-choice-five-growing-threats-women-s-healthcare-access-and-autonomy">chip away at abortion rights</a> doesn't go far enough, pledging to instead enact personhood laws that would give legal rights to zygotes.</p>
<p>Personhood USA <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/spurned-georgia-group-launching-even-more-extreme-rival-national-right-life-committee"> initially supported </a> the new group, as did its national spokeswoman Rebecca Kiessling, and Z Politics reports that NPA&rsquo;s founder, Dan Becker, &ldquo;initially gained support from Personhood USA by suggesting that the two groups work alongside one another as counterparts.&rdquo; In fact, NPA is <a href="http://www.personhood.net/index.php/take-action/register-for-npa-congress-of-states-conference">billing its first convention</a> next month as &ldquo;the founding coalition of two new national groups seeking to give voice to the pro-life battle of the 21<sup>st</sup> century.&rdquo;</p>
<p>But the good feelings apparently didn&rsquo;t last long, as Personhood USA is now accusing Becker and NPA of &ldquo;trying to replace Personhood USA by using our structures and Intellectual property&rdquo; &mdash; including copying its logo &mdash; and &ldquo;violating Personhood USA&rsquo;s trademark of Personhood.&rdquo; (For what it&rsquo;s worth, the only official &ldquo;personhood&rdquo; trademark we could find in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office&rsquo;s database <a href="vhttp://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=doc&state=4805:7yrzuj.5.1">belongs to Becker&rsquo;s group</a>).</p>
<p>Personhood USA&rsquo;s email also hints at possible legal action.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After much prayer and deliberation, the Personhood USA board is deeply&nbsp;sadden to inform you, that Personhood USA will not be participating in the&nbsp;new National Personhood Alliance.</p>
<p>From everything Dan Becker had told us about his vision of NPA while he&nbsp;was in our employment. We had great hopes that it would be a complement to&nbsp;the Personhood movement, a counterpart to Personhood USA. Instead it&nbsp;appears that National Personhood Alliance is trying to replace Personhood&nbsp;USA by using our structures and Intellectual property.</p>
<p>NPA has incorporated in Georgia as a 501c4 under the name &ldquo;Personhood&nbsp;Inc.&rdquo; and will be doing business as &ldquo;Personhood&rdquo;, Violating Personhood&nbsp;USA&rsquo;s trademark of Personhood. In addition, the emails and documents we&nbsp;have seen indicate that they intended to use our logos, branding, and&nbsp;intellectual property.</p>
<p>One of the main concerns here is duplication of focus and confusion among&nbsp;all grassroots supporters.</p>
<p>When we contacted Dan and asked that NPA stop using our logos and name, he&nbsp;agreed to stop using our logos and to allow us to preview any new logos&nbsp;before they are implemented, but he has refused to un-incorporate&nbsp;Personhood Inc. and suggested we enter into arbitration.</p>
<p>We have worked for years developing our branding. We are known as&nbsp;Personhood, PersonhoodUSA, Personhood Education, Personhood PAC & have&nbsp;invested in promoting Personhood(insert your state). We do not want to&nbsp;fight over a name, but we do feel if a separate virtually identical&nbsp;organization is started it will hurt the movement.</p>
<p>We want to honor God and protect all innocent life. We want to see the&nbsp;movement grow and branch off in new directions. We want abortion to be&nbsp;abolished. We want to fight abortion, not each other.</p>
<p>All we ask of NPA is to create it&rsquo;s own logos, names, and branding without&nbsp;using ours, and ask that they keep NPA as it was presented to us: a&nbsp;separate organization with unique purpose created to build the movement.&nbsp;Not a divisive, confusing organization meant to compete with Personhood USA.</p>
</blockquote>
Miranda BlueAnti-ChoiceC4Craig BeckerGeorgiaGeorgia Right to LifeNational Personhood AlliancepersonhoodPersonhood USAReproductive HealthFighting the Right48181Fri, 05 Sep 2014 10:09:30 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice Calls On Congress To Ban 'Discrimination' Against Those Who Practice Anti-Gay Discriminationhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-calls-congress-ban-discrimination-against-those-who-practice-anti-gay-discriminati
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice.jpg?1408378123" />
<p>Last month, President Obama <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/obama-signs-lgbt-protection-federal-workers-contractors-109174.html">signed an executive order</a> banning anti-gay discrimination by companies that receive federal contracts and Jody Hice, the right-wing radio host who is the GOP nominee for an open House seat from Georgia, is none too pleased about it, saying on his <a href="http://youtu.be/Jm-OEUdFjbw">radio program</a> last month that Obama is thumbing his nose at the First Amendment and calling on Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the federal government from "discriminating" against Christians who want to discriminate against gays.</p>
<p>Citing the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling, Hice said that Obama's decision to sign this executive order "is almost like a thumbing of the nose of the president at the U.S. Supreme Court, at our First Amendment, at our unalienable rights ... How else do you look at this but a thumbing of those nose of our administration at our First Amendment and our Supreme Court at the same time."</p>
<p>Hice went on to call upon Congress to repeal Obama's executive order by passing legislation that would "clearly prohibit our government from itself discriminating against any individual or any group or organization, whether nonprofit or for profit, it doesn't matter, to prevent the government from discriminating based on the beliefs about marriage and sexuality."</p>
<p>"Our government, our system, absolutely should be prohibited from discriminating against these types of groups," Hice declared. "Our government should not be allowed to use these things to penalize individuals and groups for not adjusting their philosophies to political correct ideas":</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/163680422&color=ff0000&auto_play=false&hide_related=true&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
Kyle MantylaAnti-GayGeorgiaJody HiceC3Fighting the Right47974Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:07:59 -0500GeorgiaGOP House Candidate Jody Hice Touts Bundy Ranch Standoff As Symbol Of Anti-Gay Fighthttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-touts-bundy-ranch-standoff-symbol-anti-gay-fight
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Cliven_Bundy.jpg?1398351577" />
<p>In a<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCWhJB6GBkg"> radio program</a>&nbsp;posted online Monday, Georgia pastor Jody Hice, the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-barry-loudermilk-win-gop-primaries-georgia">GOP nominee to replace Paul Broun in the U.S. House</a>, linked the anti-government Bundy ranch standoff to anti-gay politics, saying that the militia groups that faced off against the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada were a symbol of Americans standing up against Big Government incursions on their liberties&hellip;like the legalization of same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>&ldquo;There is unquestionably an undercurrent that is taking place across America where people are getting fed up,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They are saying to themselves and now beginning to say to themselves, &lsquo;Enough is enough. We are not going to sit back while our government tramples over our liberties.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/160123374&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I will never forget these ranchers on horseback continuing to walk slowly toward the BLM. They were prepared to die. They were ready for confrontation. They were saying, &lsquo;Enough is enough. You&rsquo;re not going to trample on our rights any more. You have gone far enough and no further will you go.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I mean, that was the statement being made by the ranchers and they continued marching toward the BLM. You will remember what happened, eventually the BLM never fired a shot, instead they got in their vehicles and left. Again, one of the other reasons they did not fire a shot is because all these ranchers, the cowboys and many, many others around them were themselves armed and ready for action if it came to that point, thank God it did not, but they were prepared just in case.</p>
<p>Now, that&rsquo;s the image that comes to my mind. There is unquestionably an undercurrent that is taking place across America where people are getting fed up. They are saying to themselves and now beginning to say to themselves, &lsquo;Enough is enough. We are not going to sit back while our government tramples over our liberties.&rsquo;</p>
<p>And the examples are numerous. We could deal with different scenarios I don&rsquo;t know how many times, they are abundant in the various ways in which this is taking place.</p>
<p>Now, I want to give you just what is the latest example: the whole battle over gay marriage, and in particular gay marriage as it relates to businesses, that businesses cannot remain committed to their personal religious convictions if there is ever a confrontation between those religious beliefs and same-sex marriage.</p>
</blockquote>
Miranda BlueAnti-GayC4Cliven BundyElection 2014Equality For AllGeorgiaJody HiceMarriage EqualityNevadaFighting the Right47691Thu, 24 Jul 2014 13:12:39 -0500GeorgiaWhat Happened To GOP House Candidate Jody Hice's Radio Archives?http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/what-happened-gop-house-candidate-jody-hices-archives-insane-radio-rants
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice_A.jpg?1401295237" />
<p>This week, pastor, radio host and Religious Right activist <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-barry-loudermilk-win-gop-primaries-georgia">Jody Hice won the GOP primary</a> to succeed Rep. Paul Broun in the U.S. House in Georgia&rsquo;s 10<sup>th</sup> District.</p>
<p>Now, it seems that he may be trying to brush his record of extremism under the rug.</p>
<p>In the weeks leading up to this week's primary, we and several other outlets&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/7-outrageous-rants-gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-blood-moons-sandy-hook-women-and-judicial-t">posted audio excerpts </a> from Hice's extensive radio archives. Now, suddenly, all of the shows we had listened to are nowhere to be found. Each of the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/7-outrageous-rants-gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-blood-moons-sandy-hook-women-and-judicial-t"> four radio programs we had linked to </a> and excerpted have been removed from YouTube. In fact, all of Hice&rsquo;s radio programs from before last month have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/WeTalkCulture/videos">disappeared from his show&rsquo;s YouTube page</a>.</p>
<p>We&rsquo;ve reached out to Hice&rsquo;s campaign to ask about the removal of the archives and will update this post if we hear back. But in the meantime you can listen to the audio we have captured, since removed from YouTube, of Hice blaming the Sandy Hook shooting on the separation of church and state,</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/151699058&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>lamenting that homosexuality &ldquo;enslaves&rdquo; people &ldquo;in a lifestyle that frankly they are not,&rdquo;</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/151699050&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>complaining about hate crimes protections for transgender people,</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/151699055&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>and musing on the meaning of &ldquo;blood moons&rdquo; on Jewish holidays.</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/151699045&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
Miranda BlueAnti-GayC4Election 2014GeorgiaJody HiceFighting the Right47687Thu, 24 Jul 2014 11:55:27 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice Says The Second Amendment Gives Citizens The Right To Own 'Cannons And Bazookas And Missiles'http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hice-second-amendment-gives-private-citizens-right-own-cannons-and-bazookas-and-missiles
<p>As Miranda <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-barry-loudermilk-win-gop-primaries-georgia">noted yesterday</a>, Jody Hice, a Religious Right activist and radio host with a long history of making <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/7-outrageous-rants-gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-blood-moons-sandy-hook-women-and-judicial-t">outrageous statements</a>, won a run-off election in Georgia to become the official Republican Party nominee for a seat in Congress.</p>
<p>Hice seems to have almost completely wiped away the archives of his radio broadcasts when he decided to run for office but some of his programs still remain available, such as <a href="http://youtu.be/YcKd6x_68lE">this one</a> posted on YouTube in which Hice reacts to the 2012 shooting that killed twelve people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado by blaming the separation of church and state, legal abortion, and evolution.</p>
<p>"The more the Judeo-Christian principles of our Founders are removed," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jqVZzwG8Fc">Hice said</a>, "the more you can expect Batman theater-type events taking place, the more you can expect Columbine and Virginia Tech-type tragedies occurring in America. This is what you get absent God."</p>
<p>Hice went on to blame things like legal abortion and the teaching of evolution is schools for conditioning people to accept the idea that "life is meaningless" and "the more we promote that junk ... the more we will get this type of result":</p>
<p align="center"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org//www.youtube.com/embed/7jqVZzwG8Fc" width="560"></iframe></p>
<p>Hice then spent the second half of his program warning that liberals would seek to use the shooting to push for gun control, prompting him to stake out the extreme position that there are to be no limits on the Second Amendment because American citizens have the right to possess literally any weapon that the government possesses.</p>
<p>"It is my belief that any, any, any, any weapon that our government and law enforcement possesses," Hice said, "ought to be allowed for individuals to possess in this country."</p>
<p>Apparently this applies to tanks, fighter jets, and even nuclear weapons because, Hice argued, so long as people can pay for them and don't have a criminal record, they have a right to protect themselves from a tyrannical government with the same weapons that the government can use against them.</p>
<p>"The Second Amendment," <a href="http://youtu.be/CvS5wuwe6kI">he said</a>, "is about us defending ourselves against potentially tyrannical government. You cannot defend yourself with a BB gun if your opponent has cannons and bazookas and missiles":</p>
<p align="Center"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org//www.youtube.com/embed/CvS5wuwe6kI" width="560"></iframe></p>
Kyle MantylaGeorgiaJody HiceC3Fighting the Right47681Thu, 24 Jul 2014 09:47:01 -0500GeorgiaJody Hice, Barry Loudermilk Win GOP Primaries In Georgiahttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jody-hice-barry-loudermilk-win-gop-primaries-georgia
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice_A.jpg?1401295237" />
<p>Two candidates with sterling Religious Right credentials won runoff primary elections yesterday to become GOP nominees to the U.S. House in Georgia.</p>
<p>Jody Hice <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ultra-conservative-jody-hice-wins-ga-10-primary">won a primary</a> to succeed Rep. Paul Broun in Georgia&rsquo;s 10<sup>th</sup> District, and seems prepared to pick up Broun&rsquo;s mantle as one of the most far-right members of Congress.</p>
<p>In 2012, Hice <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/jody-hice-georgia-sodomy">wrote a book</a> in which he claimed that gay people have launched a scheme to &ldquo;sodomize&rdquo; children and proposed that Muslims be denied First Amendment rights.</p>
<p>Hice, a Baptist pastor, also <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/7-outrageous-rants-gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-blood-moons-sandy-hook-women-and-judicial-t"> hosts a syndicated radio show </a> in which he has compared homosexuality to alcoholism and lamented that it &ldquo;enslaves&rdquo; people &ldquo;in a lifestyle that frankly they are not&rdquo;; blamed school shootings on the end of government-sponsored school prayer; and speculated about the prophetic qualities of &ldquo;blood moons.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Hice, who made his name advocating for copies of the Ten Commandments to be displayed in government buildings, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/7-outrageous-rants-gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-blood-moons-sandy-hook-women-and-judicial-t"> once told a newspaper reporter&nbsp;</a> that a woman should be free to run for public office&hellip;.as long as she stays &ldquo;within the authority of her husband.&rdquo;</p>
<p>And just last week, Hice suggested that the crisis of refugee children at the southern border might need to be dealt with through <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gop-house-candidate-suggests-second-amendment-response-border-crisis">&ldquo;Second Amendment&rdquo; means</a>.</p>
<p>Also <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/23/former-georgia-congressman-bob-barr-defeated-in-gop-house-runoff/"> winning his GOP primary in Georgia yesterday </a> was state Sen. Barry Loudermilk, who beat former Rep. Bob Barr in a runoff in the 11<sup>th</sup> District. Loudermilk is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/dangers-getting-phd-history-david-barton-university">an acolyte</a> of <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/barton-s-bunk-religious-right-historian-hits-the-big-time-tea-party-america">fake historian David Barton</a>, who endorsed his campaign. When he won Barton&rsquo;s endorsement, Loudermilk <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/barry-loudermilk-david-barton_n_3907809.html">said</a>, "There is no greater expert on the U.S. Constitution and the underpinnings of American government, than David Barton."</p>
Miranda BlueAnti-GayAnti-MuslimBarry LoudermilkC4David Barton Election 2014GeorgiaJody HicePaul BrounFighting the Right47656Wed, 23 Jul 2014 09:29:15 -0500GeorgiaGOP House Candidate Suggests 'Second Amendment' Response To Border Crisishttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gop-house-candidate-suggests-second-amendment-response-border-crisis
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Jody_Hice_A.jpg?1401295237" />
<p>Jody Hice, a Republican candidate to replace Rep. Paul Broun in Georgia&rsquo;s congressional delegation, told a conservative radio show last week that &ldquo;we have the responsibility as individuals and as states to step up in those areas where our federal government will not,&rdquo; and suggested that people might have to take up arms in response to &ldquo;a government that refuses to secure our borders.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhplRdpE3gY">interview with Liberty Conservatives</a> last week, Hice predicted (correctly) <a href="http://www.click2houston.com/news/gov-rick-perry-sending-national-guard-troops-to-texas-border/27068426"> that Texas would send National Guard troops to the southern border </a> in response to the crisis of children fleeing violence in Central America.</p>
<p>But then he went further. In response to a question about the border crisis, Hice said, &ldquo;that is the reason we have a Second Amendment.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Ultimately, it&rsquo;s not about hunting and fishing and that type of thing,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about our ability as individuals to defend ourselves, be it in our own private property, but most importantly, ultimately, it comes down to the right of defending ourselves against tyranny should our government ever become a threat to our liberties. And when you are talking about a government that refuses to secure our borders, you are talking about a government that is not taking seriously its responsibility to defend us.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;We have the responsibility as individuals and as states to step up in those areas where our federal government will not,&rdquo; he added.</p>
<p align="center"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/159793492&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p><a href="http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/07/19/gop-house-candidate-jody-hice-implies-armed-individuals-should-step-up-to-defend-against-migrant-kids/">h/t Balloon Juice </a></p>
Miranda BlueC4Election 2014GeorgiaImmigrationJody HiceFighting the Right47634Tue, 22 Jul 2014 09:23:57 -0500GeorgiaBob Barr Challenges Barry Loudermilk To Disavow David Barton's Endorsementhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bob-barr-challenges-barry-loudermilk-disavow-david-bartons-endorsement
<p>Georgia State Senator Barry Loudermilk is currently seeking the Republican Party's nomination for a seat in Congress and has been touting <a href="http://loudermilkforcongress.com/constitutional-scholar-david-barton-endorses-loudermilk-campaign/">the endorsement</a> he received from "nationally recognized author, historian and constitutional expert David Barton."</p>
<p>Loudermilk's admiration of Barton is no secret, given that he mindlessly <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/dangers-getting-phd-history-david-barton-university">repeats Barton's lies</a> in his own presentations, but now it seems that it is becoming an issue in his campaign as he was asked to repudiate Barton's endorsement earlier this week <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/barr-loudermilk-clash-in-lively-forum/ngbsT/">during a debate</a> with his GOP primary opponent, former Congressman Bob Barr.</p>
<p>A clip from the debate was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eGh1M10bcs">posted on YouTube by Bartowpolitics</a> showing Barr noting that Loudermilk has very proudly accepted Barton's endorsement despite the fact, Barr said, that Barton "has been roundly and uniformly criticized with facts for taking positions that are anti-Semitic [and] that are against women voting."</p>
<p>Barr asked Loudermilk to disavow Barton's endorsement, but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l35geIQXnJg">Loudermilk refused to do so</a>, saying that he had no idea where Barr was getting his information and saying that Barton "had done a tremendous job of reintroducing Americans to their true heritage ... so, no, I'm not going to stand out here and disavow an endorsement of somebody that I believe has done a tremendous job in reintroducing Americans to their true heritage":</p>
<p align="center"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org//www.youtube.com/embed/l35geIQXnJg" width="560"></iframe></p>
<p>The allegation that Barton spoke to anti-Semitic groups <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-threatens-defamation-lawsuits-over-allegations-he-spoke-anti-semitic-groups">stems back over twenty years</a> and Barton has consistently insisted that he was not aware of the views of some of the groups that he addressed.&nbsp;</p>
<p>As for the claim that Barton is "against women voting," that comes from an ironically Bartonesque misrepresentation of a <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-not-allowing-women-vote-was-designed-keep-family-together">radio program he did earlier this year</a> when he asserted that the Founding Fathers did not grant women the right to vote in order "to keep the family together."</p>
<p>We have listened to literally thousands of hours of Barton's programs and presentations and he can be <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/barton-s-bunk-religious-right-historian-hits-the-big-time-tea-party-america">justifiably criticized for a lot of things</a> (most notably, being a serial liar), but being anti-Semitic and against women voting should not be among them.</p>Kyle MantylaBarry LoudermilkBob Barr David Barton GeorgiaC3Fighting the Right47541Fri, 11 Jul 2014 09:39:14 -0500GeorgiaJoe Arpaio Wannabe Quits Following Racist Text Message Scandalhttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/joe-arpaio-wannabe-quits-following-racist-text-messages-scandal
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="250" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Joe_Arpaio.jpg?1397160781" />
<p>A sheriff in Georgia who wanted to bring notorious anti-immigrant Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio&rsquo;s methods to his jurisdiction has resigned following a <a href="http://www.times-herald.com/local/20140616-Grantville-Chief-Resigns-WEB2014-06-16T12-09-30">scandal over racist text messages</a>.</p>
<p>The Newnan Times-Herald <a href="http://www.times-herald.com/local/20140616-Grantville-Chief-Resigns-WEB2014-06-16T12-09-30">reports</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
Embattled Grantville Police Chief Doug Jordan has officially resigned.<br />
<br />
On Friday Jordan was suspended upon allegations of several text messages that were allegedly sent by Jordan to Grantville police officers which contained derogatory language &ndash; specifically the &ldquo;N-word,&rdquo; according to Grantville Mayor Jim Sells.<br />
<br />
&ldquo;When we approached the chief in regards to these allegations, he did not deny them and accepted some culpability,&rdquo; Sells said. &ldquo;Following this revelation, he was immediately placed on suspension.&rdquo;<br />
<br />
&hellip;<br />
<br />
Grantville City Council was originally slated to discuss the reasons of the suspension and review their options in regards to Jordan during a closed session Monday evening. However, since Jordan resigned on Sunday, the matter will not be taken up since he is no longer an official city employee.</blockquote>
<p>One sign that it may have been inevitable that Jordan was caught in a racial bias scandal?</p>
<p>He <a href="http://www.times-herald.com/local/20130904-Grantville-interdiction">wanted to be the Joe Arpaio of Georgia</a>, viewing the <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2013/10/02/federal-judge-orders-monitoring-arizona-sheriff-joe-arpaio-to-ensure-end-to/">discriminatory</a> Maricopa County sheriff as a model.</p>
<blockquote>
&ldquo;I was very interested in how he described his ability to make people mad at him by simply enforcing the state and federal laws he is sworn to uphold,&rdquo; Jordan said. &ldquo;I told him, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s this simple, we the people of the United States, either citizens or politicians, do not have the pleasure to pick and choose which laws we will abide by. As law enforcement officials, we do not get to pick and choose which laws we enforce.&rsquo;&rdquo;<br />
<br />
&hellip;<br />
<br />
&ldquo;We are in the process of setting up some training for the Grantville officers to travel to Arizona and get hands-on training,&rdquo; Jordan said. &hellip;<br />
<br />
&ldquo;I plan to make a change here in Grantville,&rdquo; Jordan said, &ldquo;and being as tough on crime as Sheriff Arpaio is will help make the city of Grantville a safe place to live and raise a family. We are on the right track now.&rdquo;<br />
<br />
&ldquo;Any chance that I can send a Grantville police officer to Arizona to train with the best would be unheard of without the support from Sheriff Arpaio,&rdquo; he added.</blockquote>
Brian TashmanC4GeorgiaJoe ArpaioFighting the Right47216Tue, 17 Jun 2014 09:30:11 -0500GeorgiaSpurned Georgia Group Launching Even More Extreme Rival To National Right To Life Committeehttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/spurned-georgia-group-launching-even-more-extreme-rival-national-right-life-committee
<img class="imagefield imagefield-field_teaser_astory" width="390" height="249" alt="" src="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/images/a_story_rww/Anti_Choice_Rally.jpg?1396364952" />
<p>A no-compromise anti-choice group that was recently ousted as National Right to Life Committee&rsquo;s Georgia affiliate is launching a new, even more extreme national group to compete with NRLC.</p>
<p>In April, we <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-usa-joins-battle-over-anti-choice-leadership-georgia">wrote about</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/new-erick-erickson-backed-group-ousts-hardline-anti-choice-org-georgia">the drama</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-choice-infighting-disrupts-georgia-colorado-senate-races">in Georgia</a>, where an upstart group backed by pundit Erick Erickson succeeded in booting Georgia Right to Life from its spot in the NRLC. Their feud was over not ideology, but strategy. NRLC and Erickson backed a 20-week abortion ban in the House that included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest; Georgia Right to Life and other <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/personhood-usa-joins-battle-over-anti-choice-leadership-georgia"> hardline groups said that those exemptions made the bill unacceptable</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While all the major anti-choice groups share the same goal &mdash; criminalizing all abortions under nearly all circumstances &mdash;&nbsp;they differ in how to go about reaching that goal in a post-<em>Roe v. Wade</em> world. This came to a boil last year, when the House voted on a bill banning all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. At the last minute, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor <a href="http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/gop-leadership-adds-rape-incest-exceptions-to-20-week-abortion-ban-house-vo">added rape and incest exemptions</a> to the bill after the legislation&rsquo;s chief sponsor, Trent Franks, stoked controversy when he said &ldquo; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/12/trent-franks-rape-pregnancy_n_3428846.html">the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low</a> .&rdquo; The addition of rape and incest exceptions then caused the anti-choice movement to split.</p>
<p>National Right to Life <a href="http://www.nrlc.org/communications/releases/2013/release061813/">supported the revised bill</a> and <a href="http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/scorecard.xc?chamber=H&state=US&session=113&x=11&y=17"> included the vote on its congressional scorecard </a> . But Georgia Right to Life, then the state affiliate of NRLC, opposed the revised bill because of its rape and incest exceptions and urged House members to &ldquo;<a href="http://www.grtl.org/?q=fetal-pain-bill-hijacked">vote against this shameful legislation</a>.&rdquo; Two Georgia Republicans, including Rep. Paul Broun, who is now running for Senate, crossed party lines to vote against the bill, siding with Georgia Right to Life.</p>
<p>One of the loudest critics of Georgia Right to Life&rsquo;s insubordination was Georgia-based conservative pundit Erick Erickson, who called the group the &ldquo;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/new-erick-erickson-backed-group-ousts-hardline-anti-choice-org-georgia">Westboro Baptist Church of the pro-life movemen</a>t.&rdquo; A few weeks ago, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-choice-infighting-disrupts-georgia-colorado-senate-races">a new group with Erickson on its board</a> sprung up with the goal of replacing Georgia Right to Life as the official state affiliate of NRLC. And this weekend, they succeeded, as NRLC cut ties with Georgia Right to Life and <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/new-erick-erickson-backed-group-ousts-hardline-anti-choice-org-georgia"> took on Erickson&rsquo;s group, Georgia Life Alliance, in its place</a>.</p>
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<p>Today, Georgia Right to Life struck back, announcing that it is forming the National Personhood Alliance, a new network of state-level groups that that support the no-compromise strategy. In a press release announcing the move, <a href="http://christiannewswire.com/news/2179074305.html"> Georgia Right to Life President Daniel Becker takes a clear swipe at National Right to Life</a>: &ldquo;Compromise is not possible. This is not like roads or highways or agricultural subsidies; when we compromise - someone dies."</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"The focus of NPA will differ from most national pro-life groups," Becker said. "The general consensus of many in the movement is that it's time for a fresh strategy for ending the disregard for innocent human life. We intend to be 'standard-bearers' as opposed to 'king-makers'. This will require the application, politically and legislatively, of a higher standard than is currently embraced by most national pro-life groups today."</p>
<p>Becker said, "There has been an overwhelming call from many within the movement to form a new national pro-life group which will represent us on Capitol Hill."</p>
<p>The new organization will be officially formed at a convention to be held in Atlanta, GA on October 10th and 11th. Representatives of existing pro-life organizations and leaders from across the country are invited. Attendees who affirm the <a href="http://www.personhoodus.com/index.php/press/who-is-national-personhood-alliance">founding charter</a> will begin the process of electing a national board of directors representing each state.</p>
<p>"The pro-life movement is more than 40 years old," Becker said. "From its inception in the late 1960's, the focus has primarily been on ending abortion. Our concern must be expanded to encompass the dignity and value of each human being at any developmental stage through natural death.</p>
<p>"To achieve that goal, we must ensure that our strategies are consistent with our policies and objectives. Compromise is not possible. This is not like roads or highways or agricultural subsidies; when we compromise - someone dies."</p>
<p>Keith Mason, Personhood USA President: "Personhood USA looks forward to working with emerging groups like the National Personhood Alliance who share our commitment to never compromise on the lives of pre-born babies."</p>
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<p>The new National Personhood Alliance has the support of Personhood USA and claims to have <a href="http://www.personhoodus.com/index.php/personhood-advocates/personhood-advocates/personhood-advocates#Groups">allied groups in 17 states</a>. It has also <a href="http://www.personhoodus.com/index.php/personhood-advocates/personhood-advocates/personhood-advocates#NPA">racked up endorsements</a> from Liberty Counsel&rsquo;s Mat Staver, talk show host Steve Deace, and a number of anti-choice activists.</p>
Miranda BlueAnti-ChoiceC4Daniel BeckerErick EricksonGeorgiaGeorgia Life AllianceGeorgia Right to LifeMat Staver National Personhood AllianceNational Right to Life Committee Personhood USAReproductive HealthSteve DeaceFighting the Right47210Mon, 16 Jun 2014 15:15:51 -0500Georgia